Auckland (The NZ Today)
New Zealand’s difficult employment market is hitting young graduates particularly hard, with one Wellington jobseeker revealing she submitted 661 applications in a year before receiving just two offers.
Hannah Tollison’s experience comes as graduate vacancies remain a very small share of available jobs and young applicants increasingly find themselves competing not only with other graduates, but also with people who already have workplace experience.
Figures supplied by recruitment platform Seek show graduate positions accounted for only a little over 2 percent of advertised roles last month.
Tollison, who has completed both undergraduate and postgraduate study in communications, kept a detailed record of her job search between July 2025 and July 2026.
Her tally eventually reached 661 applications and 53 interviews, producing two job offers.
She told RNZ the process became so demanding that searching for work often felt like a job in itself.
Tollison had previously secured a public-sector position after finishing her bachelor’s degree, but the role disappeared within weeks as agencies reduced staffing.
Rather than relying on artificial intelligence to prepare applications, she said she chose to write them herself, using the communication skills she had developed through university.
She also said repeated rejection could be difficult to separate from personal confidence, particularly when applications give candidates limited opportunity to show who they are beyond a CV and cover letter.
The pressure is not confined to one graduate.
Recent university leavers have been entering a labour market where unemployment remains elevated and employers can choose from much larger pools of applicants.
Some graduates have consequently taken work outside the fields they studied, while others are spending months applying for entry-level positions.
There are signs that hiring demand may be starting to improve.
MBIE’s Jobs Online measure showed online vacancies increased 7 percent in the year to June 2026, although Student Job Search says conditions remain particularly difficult for younger workers.
Source: RNZ
